The State Department said Thursday that Iran’s latest response to a new nuclear deal proposal is “not constructive,” putting an agreement in peril after some recent progress.
The European Union, which has been coordinating talks to reconstitute the 2015 Iran nuclear deal for the last 16 months, received Tehran’s response Thursday to U.S. comments on the proposed text of the deal. The United States plans to respond to the latest Iranian notes on the deal through the EU.
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“We can confirm that we have received Iran’s response through the EU. We are studying it and will respond through the EU, but unfortunately, it is not constructive,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said Thursday.
However, Iran said on Thursday that it believes it sent over a “constructive” response and hopes to finalize the deal soon.
“The text that was sent [by Iran] has a constructive approach aimed at finalizing the negotiations,” Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani told Iranian state media, according to Reuters.
EU officials sent the U.S. and Iran the “final text” of the deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program and provide sanctions relief in early August.
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Last week, the White House expressed some optimism that a deal to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action could soon be reached, noting that Iran dropped key demands that yielded new progress. The dropped demands reportedly included the condition that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps be delisted as a foreign terrorist organization.
Former President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the previous deal in 2018 and reimposed economic sanctions on Iran.
